Tag: Codea »

Two Lives Left has updated Codea to version 2.0. The updated iteration brings in iOS stylings to the app; it now also features full 64-bit support, as well as more features that can be found in the extensive list below.

Assets

• Codea now features a brand new unified asset system that supports sounds, music, images and more
• Music API for playing background music in popular formats
• Three fantastic new sound and music packs for you to use in your games — composed especially for Codea

Completely New Code Editor

• Intelligent autocomplete picks up all your variables, locals and nested types
• In-line errors show up live as you code
• Smart indentation and scope completion
• Most editor keys can be long-pressed for more options
• Support for multi-line comments
• Fix your code layout with the new Re-Indent feature

New Features

• Find and Replace: access via the search button on the keyboard
• Location API: access GPS data in Codea
• displayMode(OVERLAY): use this for a transparent sidebar in your projects
• Codea now uses double precision floating point
• Projects can be sorted by recently opened, or by name
• Z-level supported in setContext
• Bluetooth Keyboard Shortcut support (see Getting Started section for a full list)

Improvements

• Codea has lost weight: Codea 2.0 is 23 MB, compared with 36 MB for the old version
• Air Code respects your editor theme choice (light or dark)
• Shader Lab can bind arrays, and will tell you about failed bindings
• Shader compilation errors are printed as warnings in your projects
• Dark keyboard style for dark theme

Fixes

• Many, many fixes. Including the wrapped line issue in code editor

Codea is a unique code editor that allows user to create and tweak projects right on their OS devices. It incorporates several features to make the mobile experience enjoyable. It is available for $9.99 on the App Store.

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So little time and so very many apps. What's a poor iPhone lover to do? Fortunately, 148Apps is here to give you the rundown on the latest and greatest releases. And we even have a tremendous back catalog of reviews; just check out the Reviews Archive for every single review we've ever written.

I enjoy Roguelikes. I have a thing for RPGs. I love action-adventure games. I even dabble in monster-collection fairly often. But in all honesty, would anyone expect all of those great tastes to taste great together? Turns out it doesn’t matter because Foursaken Media has mixed them all in the big proverbial jug that is iOS, and the result is so good it just has to be fattening. Monster Adventures begins (and pretty much stays in) the town of Yerpa. It’s a quaint place surrounded by forests, mountains, and snowy plains, all of which are crawling with monsters. Fortunately our hero/playable character stumbles upon a friendly critter in the town’s well, and the duo set out to be the very best. Possibly like no one ever was. --Rob Rich

There haven’t been a lot of serious attempts to replicate the formula of Zombie Gunship, which is unfortunate: that game made zombie killing fun in a special way. Gunner Z is one of the few that takes it on, but it struggles due in large part to its structure. The game puts players in the gunner seat of a truck that’s out to go blow up some zombies and the human sympathizers that seem to all have military ranks. Players can raise or lower their height to get the perfect angle against zombies, though it never feels like it’s of much practical use. Players get a standard gun of their choice with unlimited ammo, and a set of rockets that can be used to help take out more powerful enemies and large groups of zombies. If the zombies get close they’ll do heavy damage to the truck, and if the truck runs out of health it’s mission over. --Carter Dotson

Back before there was ever a Master Chief or even an Angry Bird, there was once an adventurer named Guybrush Threepwood. Ron Gilbert was one of the brains behind the success of LucasArts’ original run of Monkey Island PC titles, later departing from the studio to pursue other projects. Fast forward to 2011, Gilbert re-teamed with fellow LucasArts alum Tim Schafer to re-imagine the adventure game for the modern generation. Has The Cave recaptured the magic of old, or is this a nostalgic trip down frustration lane? Adventure games have had a long legacy of turning a player’s mind to mush. For this reason, it only seems fitting that The Cave harkens back to the classic Maniac Mansion, where the player is faced with selecting which three of the seven available characters to use for the entirety of the game, right out of the gate. Decisions, decisions. Depending upon the selected avatars the puzzles and story may be modified slightly, lending itself well to a least two additional replay sessions. --Blake Grundman

Capturing that one perfect shot of a group of friends can be difficult. There’s almost always someone who is blinking, not looking at the camera, or forgetting to smile. Now there is an app available that solves all these problems and more. Perfect Shot couldn’t have a better name since it essentially describes exactly what the app does. Designed specifically with iOS7 in mind, Perfect Shot detects the number of individuals in a photograph and can detect their eyes and smiles. What’s amazing about this app is that it automatically captures a photo once everyone in the group is smiling and not blinking, so there’s no need to press the shutter button. Of course, eye and smile detection can be turned on or off by tapping on the gear icon in the lower right corner. --Angela LaFollette

I am pleased to have had a chance to review Toca Boca’s new app, Toca Cars. As many may know, Toca Boca is known for their wonderful digital toys based on the real world playthings children use every day, and Toca Cars continues in the footsteps of their other great apps. It is worth explaining that Toca Cars is not so much a first-person POV driving simulator. Instead, it allows one to drive a car around a track with the drag of a finger. More impressive is the chance to drive and crash into the landscape the track has incorporated within; including many various buildings, street signs, a few animals or other characters, colorful ice cream puddles, ramps, and many more details too numerous to name. --Amy Solomon

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If you are looking for the best reviews of Android apps, just head right over to AndroidRundown. Here are just some of the reviews served up this week:

AndroidRundown

Good pure RTS games aren’t exactly easy to find on Android. Sure, there are a few good ones, but few can match the strategic depth to be found in Autumn Dynasty. Autumn Dynasty tells the story of a Royal Scholar, an important, intelligent man sent on a routine journey by the ruling government. He runs into a spot of trouble and, after proving himself against his enemies, you’ll follow his story as he grows into a leader and unearths a sinister plot. AD tells a great story and the very well done character art and interesting dialogue really drive the game’s story onwards and gives a lot of incentive to complete the next mission. --Allan Curtis

Evomail is part of the new generation of email apps, ones that shoot for a greater degree of accessibility and inbox management. But for me, Evomail comes with one killer feature: the ability to remove emails from the inbox temporarily by ‘snoozing’ them. On my iOS devices, Mailbox’s ease of use and interface has made it my client of choice. This is a problem because I rely on its ability to easily delay emails to a later time to help keep my sanity. Yet despite Mailbox’s expensive acquisition by Dropbox, it’s still an iOS-only affair. It’s frustrating, because it’s something Google has yet to add in as a built-in feature despite making the Android Gmail app more like Mailbox and Evomail with things like swiping actions. So now Evomail is on Android, and with it, the ability to procrastinate on answering emails. But it’s not quite the great email experience that I wanted. --Carter Dotson

Pinball is one of those old-school games that are almost always perfect as-is. Why? It presents the perfect union of physics, chance and human skill. It’s beautiful… even the electronic versions seem best when they are presented “traditionally.” Maybe, just maybe PinWar is an exception. “The” exception? In this game, basic pinball gets souped up into a battle zone that pits fast reflexes against human opponents or artificial intelligence. There are a few different play modes. In Quick Battle, it’s a war of attrition; play continues until one side loses all available tokens, with friends being expended with every pinball conceded. This mode is s quick shootout. --Tre Lawrence

And finally, this week, Pocket Gamer took a look at the new and noteworthy iOS games, including Costume Quest, KAMI, Duet, and Ring Run Circus. It also investigated Codea, an app that lets you make games on your iPad. And the site reviewed huge new 3DS adventure, Pokemon X and Y. Take a look, in PG's weekly wrap-up.

Mark Brown, perhaps best known for being Deputy Editor over at Pocket Gamer, has just released his first game; Pixel This!, an elegant Nonogram title that he made to try and improve on the other similar games on the App Store. Because of his unique position as both someone who covers mobile gaming, and now someone who made a mobile game - and he did it almost entirely on an iPad using Codea - I was eager to learn more about Pixel This! and the process of its creation.

(full disclosure: Pocket Gamer and 148Apps are owned by Steel Media, which had no say in the promotion or editorial coverage of this game)

148Apps: What compelled you to make Pixel This?

Mark Brown (MB): I just adore Picross (or Nonograms or Griddlers or whatever you want to call them) which is this brilliant puzzle game from Japan that's all about using logic and deduction to draw a cute pixel art image. I think I accidentally stumbled upon Mario's Picross on Game Boy, and have loved those puzzles ever since. But I don't think I've found an iOS app that has done the game justice.

They're usually a bit ugly, or make it hard to control on the teeny tiny iPhone screen. They can be expensive or, if they're free, jammed with adverts or costly IAPs. So I thought there was room to make something better! Pixel This! isn't perfect and there's plenty of room to improve, but I'm really pleased with the result and the feedback.

148Apps: Why go with the free+unlock model on the game?

MB: It's funny, because I'm a pretty staunch opponent of the free-to-play model, but here I am launching a free-to-play game on the App Store! But I think this is a good way to let people have a go with the game first, see if they can grasp the rules and see if they actually like the puzzles before putting down their cash. It is, I hope, a non-evil free-to-play where you're not buying hints or lives or anything else that's going to wreck the balance of the game. It's just more stuff if you liked the first stuff.

148Apps: Talk about that awesome soundtrack!

MB: Hah! Well, you've got to focus on what you know, and I do not know music at all. So I decided to not subject anyone to my pitiful attempts to make a soundtrack, and want to encourage them to play their own music instead. Plus, I've always found that Picross is a fun thing to do while listening to podcasts or the radio, so it was super important that audio from other apps would continue playing when you load Pixel This!

148Apps: You made the game primarily on the iPad? How did you do this? What compelled you to work particularly on mobile?

MB: I programmed Pixel This in an iPad app called Codea, which lets you write Lua code on the tablet and then export it to Apple's developer program Xcode so you can submit it to the App Store. So the only time I used my Mac was to do the graphics in Photoshop and then some final code to get in-app purchases and Twitter support working. It's really cool to be able to write some code, hit a button, and then be immediately testing the game on one of the devices that the game will eventually be released on.

I'm also a big iPad nerd, and a huge believer in the idea that this whole "tablets are for consumption not creation" thing is totally bunkum. It's such a wonderful device to use, and the apps are only getting better, more powerful, and more flexible.

148Apps: As someone who covers the mobile space, does making games of your own change the way that you perceive them, and did your perspective as member of the gaming media affect development in any way?

MB: There are certain things we take for granted as journalists and players of games. We might flippantly say "this game should have iCloud saves and Game Center!!", without realizing how many weeks of work and testing that all involves. I don't think I'm going to stop complaining about missing features, slow updates, and missed release dates, mind you! But the experience will definitely color my view of development going forward.

As for the other way around, I think by being forced to play a billion iOS games a week makes me made hyper-aware of what works - and what doesn't - on the App Store. I hate being nagged by push notifications and I don't like being asked to review a game every five seconds, so I avoided that sort of stuff. But for the most part, I just feel very lucky to have my dumb little game on the same platform as so many amazing apps from so many hugely talented people. It's weird and awesome.

Codea, the iPad app that allows you to create and run code right on your iPad. It has received a major update to allow users even more options than before. The major update allows complete access to GLSL shaders and has a full-featured GLSL shader editor. There's also a new parameter system, documentation browser, and a blend mode.

More Details from the App Store Description:

• Shaders: Full access to GLSL shaders from the mesh class.
• Shader Lab: A full-featured GLSL shader editor with live preview and live variables.
• Camera: Stream from the cameras on your device straight into a sprite, capture them into an image, or even input them into a shader.
• Brand new Parameter system. Make buttons, color pickers, text boxes and more for the Codea sidebar.
• Vector sprite rendering. You can now load PDF files as sprites, which can be rendered at any size and still look sharp.
• Two great new vector sprite packs by Kenney.nl.
• Tween: The new tween library provides you with easy to use animations, paths, sequences and more.
• Blend Modes: Use the new blendMode() function for additive and multiplicative blending, or even set completely custom blend modes using the advanced parameters.
• Brand new Documentation Browser, copy sample code and use the sidebar for reference as-you-type.
• Completely re-architected Code Editor with built-in API guides.
• New Tools menu from the main screen lets you manage your assets.
• REPL built into the viewer. Type and execute simple expressions while your code is running.

Cargo-Bot is a game that Xzibit could be proud of. It's an iPad game, made on an iPad! Whoa!

The app was developed by Rui Viana, who made the game in Codea, Two Lives Left's Lua-based coding app formerly known as Codify. The game has players trying to move boxes around to get them into the correct arrangement. This is done through commands to move the crane left, right, and pick up/put down a box. It's also possible to set up to 4 different commands that can then be used to set up loops, and conditional statements that only work when the box is in a certain status.

Yes, that means that Cargo-Bot is an iPad game about programming, made in an iPad app that lets users program games. Whoa.

The game was prototyped and programmed in Codea over several months, with several people contributing music and art for the game. The code was imported into Two Lives Left's Codea Xcode template, which will soon be made available to Codea users, and then published to the App Store. It all started with one project made on an iPad, and now anyone can play it on their iPad.

Developer Two Lives Left (no relation to Tilt to Live developer One Man Left) has introduced an iPad app for those budding programmers out there.

Codify is an app that is based on the Lua programming language, and is designed for users to be able to easily set up and use projects on their iPad. This is not meant to be a compiler for large-scale projects, nor is it meant to be a Lua compiler for iPad, as projects are currently limited to the iPad alone. However, it provides an introduction to programming, with visual tools that can be used to help make a simple project easily.

The app comes with sample projects to explore, sample graphics to use in projects, and the ability to intelligently interact with code in ways that aren't quite available with just a standard Lua editor. This is an interesting option for people looking to get their hands dirty with actual programming, but in a much simpler and friendlier environment.